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MUZAFFARABAD – The head of the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday the focus of Pakistani earthquake relief efforts was now to avert a tragedy over the imminent winter.
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres visited the disaster zone on Thursday as the United Nations and Pakistani authorities braced for a flood of people streaming down from high country to lower, warmer areas once the cold weather set in.
"What we are trying to do is create conditions for people to be able to go over the winter without any tragedy," Guterres told reporters in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir.
"I think it is the major concern of everybody ... that's the first concern."
The Oct. 8 earthquake killed more than 73,000 people, most of them in the Pakistani side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
Hollywood stars Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who have been romantically linked, arrived in Pakistan on Thursday to visit quake survivors.
Jolie, a goodwill ambassador for the UNHCR, has travelled to more than 20 countries since taking up the job in August 2001.
About three million people lost their homes in the disaster and Pakistani authorities, as well as foreign military teams and aid agencies, are racing to ensure survivors get shelter and enough food to last them until spring.
Chief U.N. coordinator in Muzaffarabad Rashid Khalikov later told Guterres the biggest challenge for the relief effort could be an exodus of people from high-altitude settlements once the cold weather bites.
"We are preparing a strategy to cope with the movement of people in the wake of the winter," Khalikov said.
"We don't know whether it will take place or not, and how many will do it, but we are preparing," he said.
Pakistani Kashmir's relief commissioner, Salim Bismil, told Guterres authorities expected up to 50,000 more people to come down from mountains during winter, joining thousands who have already arrived.
"Gone In Seconds"
Authorities in Pakistani Kashmir have been encouraging people to leave the highest settlements and move into tent villages on the valley floors for the winter but many villagers are reluctant, at least for now, to leave their land.
"We want them to stay below 5,000 feet (1,500 metres)," Bismil said, adding that no one was being forced to move: "We are doing it by motivation and not by coercion".
Earlier, Gutteres met the prime minister of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in his quake-damaged office in Muzaffarabad, much of which was destroyed in the 7.6 magnitude tremor.
"What we achieved over the last 40 to 50 years has gone in 40 to 50 seconds," Sikander Hayat Khan said.
Gutteres also visited a tent village in North West Frontier Province and was moved by the scale of devastation in the flattened town of Balakot.
"It's awful. It's terrible. I think it is one of the worst things I have seen," he told Reuters after he drove through the town's devastated markets.
"This is a tragedy which has no parallels."
The UNHCR has organised several tent camps for homeless survivors but Guterres said his agency was concerned about unorganised, so-called spontaneous camps that have sprung up in Muzaffarabad and elsewhere.
The camps, often without water and sanitation facilities, are seen as a breeding ground for communicable diseases.
Gutteres said his agency did not want to be a leading player in helping after natural disasters but Pakistan had provided shelter to millions of refugees from neighbouring Afghanistan
"From our point of view it is more than a humanitarian operation. It is a political and moral duty. We need to be totally engaged," he said. "It is time to pay back."
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